J Happiness Stud (2012) 13:347–355
DOI 10.1007/s10902-011-9267-5
Happiness Runs in a Circular Motion: Evidence
for a Positive Feedback Loop between Prosocial
Spending and Happiness
Lara B. Aknin • Elizabeth W. Dunn • Michael I. Norton
Published online: 24 April 2011
Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract We examine whether a positive feedback loop exists between spending money
on others (i.e. prosocial spending) and happiness. Participants recalled a previous purchase
made for either themselves or someone else and then reported their happiness. Afterward,
participants chose whether to spend a monetary windfall on themselves or someone else.
Participants assigned to recall a purchase made for someone else reported feeling significantly happier immediately after this recollection; most importantly, the happier participants felt, the more likely they were to choose to spend a windfall on someone else in the
near future. Thus, by providing initial evidence for a positive feedback loop between
prosocial spending and well-being, these data offer one potential path to sustainable
happiness: prosocial spending increases happiness which in turn encourages prosocial
spending.
Keywords Happiness Well-being Money Prosocial spending Sustainability Feedback loop
1 Introduction
Can simple interventions lead to sustainable increases in subjective well-being? Much of
the research conducted to date suggests that while happiness levels can be increased, these
effects are often fleeting. Indeed, several strategies have been shown to boost well-being
levels temporarily, but their positive emotional outcomes tend to fade over time if the
strategies are not repeated regularly (e.g., Emmons and McCullough 2003; Seligman et al.
2005). While the benefits of these strategies may be transitory, it is possible that the wellbeing experienced after engaging in these behaviors might encourage people to engage in
L. B. Aknin (&) E. W. Dunn
Psychology Department, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall Vancouver,
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
e-mail: laknin@psych.ubc.ca
M. I. Norton
Marketing Department, Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field, Boston, MA, USA
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the same behaviors again. If this is the case, a positive feedback loop may occur, offering a
potential path to sustainable happiness. Here, we test whether such a positive feedback
loop exists between spending money on others and happiness.
The goal of increasing happiness over time is complicated by the fact that two distinct
literatures point to the relative stability of people’s level of happiness. First, happiness is
shaped to a large extent by stable genetic predispositions, with estimates from twin and
adoption studies suggesting that up to 80% of the variance in happiness levels can be
attributed to genetic variation (Lykken and Tellegen 1996), although a more widely
accepted figure is 50% (Lyubomirsky et al. 2005). Second, a complementary body of
research on hedonic adaptation demonstrates that people adapt to most life changes,
whether large or small (Frederick and Loewenstein 1999). Recent work, however, suggests
that adaption is not inevitable—at least when it comes to negative events (Diener et al.
2009). For instance, divorce (Lucas 2005), disability (Lucas 2007), and unemployment
(Lucas et al. 2004) have been shown to exert a lasting negative impact on well-being.
Unfortunately, people appear to adapt more thoroughly to positive life changes, such as
marriage (Lucas et al. 2003) and increased income (Helliwell 2002; Lykken and Tellegen
1996). Given the relative stability of happiness in the wake of positive life events, it is an
open question as to whether increased happiness can be maintained in the longer term.
Although happiness levels appear to be relatively stable, several promising strategies
have been shown to increase happiness. For instance, recent research has shown that
spending money on others leads to higher levels of happiness than spending on oneself
(Dunn et al. 2008). Specifically, participants assigned to spend a small windfall on
someone else by purchasing a gift or making a donation to charity (prosocial spending)
were significantly happier at the end of the day than participants assigned to spend the
same size windfall by paying for a bill, expense, or gift for themselves (personal spending,
see Dunn et al. 2008). Other strategies shown to successfully boost happiness over longer
periods of time include using one’s character strengths in new ways (Seligman et al. 2005)
and keeping a gratitude journal (e.g., Emmons and McCullough 2003). Importantly,
however, regular or repeated practice of these strategies is required to maintain long-term
happiness gains. Thus, while several interventions have been shown to increase happiness
in the short term or over elongated periods with intentional practice, it remains to be seen
whether these strategies can provide a sustainable route to happiness.
The sustainability of these strategies may depend on the boost in happiness they produce; if people experience an initial rise in happiness, they may be more likely to practice
the strategies in the future. Providing initial support for this idea, Cohn and Fredrickson (in
press) have shown that individuals who experience positive emotions in the first few weeks
after a loving-kindness meditation intervention are more likely to continue this practice as
much as 15 months later. These findings are consistent with the broaden-and-build theory
of positive emotions, which suggests that positive emotions serve to broaden an individual’s thoughts and build enduring resources (Fredrickson 1998, 2001). Thus, we propose
that a similar pattern may emerge for other happiness interventions, such as prosocial
spending. Indeed, given that previous research has shown that spending money on others
leads to higher levels of happiness than spending on oneself (Dunn et al. 2008, 2010), here
we examine whether simply recalling memories of generous spending produces similar
emotional gains. Most importantly, we explore whether these higher levels of happiness
promote future acts of generous spending. In sum, the present study explores whether
recalling a previous act of prosocial spending leads to an increase in happiness, and
whether higher levels of happiness, in turn, lead people to want to spend on others again in
the near future (Fig. 1).
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Fig. 1 Model of positive
feedback loop between prosocial
spending and happiness. Recalled
acts of prosocial spending lead to
higher levels of happiness.
Happiness, in turn, increases the
likelihood of engaging in future
acts of prosocial spending
2 Method
Fifty-one individuals (51% female, Mage = 20.3) on the University of British Columbia
campus were asked to recall and describe in as much detail as possible the last time they
spent either $20 or $100 on either themselves or someone else. That is, participants were
randomly assigned to one of four recall conditions in a 2 (spending amount: $20 vs. $100)
9 2 (purchase target: self vs. someone else) design. Recall instructions were designed to
elicit vivid reminiscence and modeled on those used by Strack et al. (1985). After
describing this memory, participants reported their happiness on the Subjective Happiness
Scale (a = .86; Lyubomirsky and Lepper 1999).
Next, participants were offered a choice between two monetary windfall amounts ($5
vs. $20) and two different ways to spend this money. These four spending options were
selected to map on to the conditions used in previous research (Dunn et al. 2008), enabling
comparison across studies. Consistent with this previous research, participants were told
they could spend the money on (1) a bill, expense, or gift for themselves (personal
spending) or (2) on a gift for someone else or donation to charity (prosocial spending).
Participants were told that they should choose whichever option would make them the
happiest and that once their decision was made, they would receive the appropriate amount
of money with a reminder of the spending guidelines. Importantly, this procedure was
conducted in an anonymous fashion to mitigate social desirability concerns by giving
participants cue cards labeled A, B, C, or D on one side with a condition description on the
other side (Fig. 2). Participants were informed that all research assistants were unaware of
which condition assignment corresponded to each letter, so the research assistants would
never know which spending experience they had selected. Participants were given several
minutes to read the spending descriptions on the cue cards and choose their spending
experience. After deciding, participants informed the research assistant of their choice
using the appropriate letter (A, B, C, or D) and then received an envelope with the windfall
amount and a spending direction reminder.1
1
Although this procedure was carefully designed to minimize social desirability concerns, it is conceivable
that some participants who selected the prosocial spending option actually intended to spend the money on
themselves. This possibility is unlikely given that previous work has shown that the majority of participants
are quite willing to express a preference for spending money on themselves, even when social desirability
concerns are higher (Dunn et al. 2008). In addition, research suggests that making an initial commitment to
engage in prosocial behavior does lead to longer term prosocial behaviour (Nelson and Norton 2005).
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Fig. 2 Future spending type selection cue cards
3 Results and Discussion
3.1 Reflecting on Prosocial Spending Increases Happiness
We predicted that recalling a previous act of prosocial spending would make people
happier than recalling a previous act of personal spending. To investigate this question, we
analyzed happiness ratings with a 2 (purchase target: self versus someone else) 9 2
(purchase amount: $20 vs. $100) ANOVA. As expected, participants randomly assigned to
recall a purchase made for someone else (M = 5.59, SD = 0.72) were significantly happier than participants assigned to recall a purchase made for themselves (M = 4.94,
SD = 1.33), F(1, 47) = 4.66, p \ .04, d = .61. Neither the main effect of purchase
amount, F(1, 47) = 1.03, p = .32, nor the interaction between purchase amount and
purchase target, F(1, 47) = 0.11, p = .74, approached significance. Thus, people felt
happier when they thought about a time when they had spent money on others rather than
themselves, and this effect was consistent across smaller ($20) and larger ($100) purchases
(Path A in Fig. 1).
3.2 Higher Levels of Happiness Predict Future Prosocial Spending
Not surprisingly, when participants were offered the option of selecting between two
windfall amounts, the majority of participants (though not all) opted to take $20 over $5,
v2(1) = 32.96, p \ .001. Participants were more equally divided on whether to spend this
money on themselves or someone else v2(1) = .18, ns (see Table 1). Our critical question,
however, was whether higher levels of happiness led participants to select a prosocial
spending choice in the future. To investigate this question, purchase amount, purchase
target, and happiness were entered into a logistic regression equation predicting future
spending choice. Consistent with our hypothesis, happiness was the only significant predictor of future spending choice (B = .95, p \ .02), such that participants who felt happier
after the recollection task were more likely to choose to engage in prosocial spending in the
future. Neither the main effect of purchase amount (B = -.06, p = .94) nor purchase
target (B = .24, p = .44) approached significance. Interestingly, the positive effect of
happiness on participants’ preference for future prosocial spending emerged consistently
across experimental conditions. When a Happiness X Purchase Target interaction term and
Happiness X Purchase Amount interaction term were added to the logistic regression
above, happiness remained the only significant predictor of future spending choice
(B = 1.03, p = .04). The main effect of happiness was not significantly moderated by
purchase target (B = .33, p = .51) or purchase amount (B = -.79, p = .09), indicating
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Table 1 The number of participants selecting each of the four
future spending choices
351
Future spending choice
Selection by
personal
spending
recall
Selection by
prosocial
spending
recall
Total
selection
frequency
$20 Personal spending
14
11
25
$20 Prosocial spending
9
12
21
$5 Personal spending
2
0
2
$5 Prosocial spending
0
3
3
that higher levels of happiness predicted a greater willingness to engage in prosocial
spending across experimental recall conditions. In sum, the happier participants felt after
the memory exercise, the more likely they were to choose to engage in prosocial spending
when presented with a new windfall (Path B in Fig. 1).
3.3 Indirect Effect
Finally, we predicted that reflecting upon a previous prosocial spending experience
would lead to a future willingness to engage in prosocial spending by making people
feel happier. To test for the presence of this indirect effect, analytic computations were
conducted with Prodclin2 (MacKinnon et al. 2007; MacKinnon et al. 2002), which
accommodated our dichotomous dependent variable. Supporting our hypotheses, the
indirect mediation model CI.95 [.02, .75] via happiness was significant (Fig. 3), providing evidence that past acts of generosity promote future acts of generosity to the
extent that overall happiness levels are increased. In contrast, the direct path between
recalled spending and future spending choice did not reach significance (B = 0.44,
p = 0.12), suggesting that reflecting on past prosocial spending does not inevitably lead
people to choose prosocial spending in the future. The absence of a direct path between
recalled spending and future spending suggests that participants are not simply motivated by a drive for consistency between their past and future spending choices. Rather,
the observed pattern of results suggests that reflecting on a past instance of prosocial spending facilitates future prosocial spending primarily by increasing happiness
levels.
Fig. 3 Indirect mediation model of recalled spending behavior to future spending choice via happiness
level. p \ .13. * p \ .05
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4 General Discussion
These results support the existence of a positive feedback loop between prosocial spending
and happiness. Taken together, our results show that (a) recalling a past prosocial spending
experience leads to higher levels of happiness, (b) higher levels of happiness increase the
likelihood of engaging in prosocial spending, and (c) recalling a past experience of prosocial spending increases the likelihood of spending a new windfall on others to the extent
that happiness levels are elevated in the interim. This suggests that spending money on
others may be self-reinforcing as long as this prosocial experience provides happiness.
The present findings are consistent with classic research (e.g., Isen 1970; Isen and Levin
1972) demonstrating that happiness facilitates prosocial behavior. Indeed, our results show
that people experiencing higher levels of happiness after recalling either a personal or
prosocial spending experience were more likely to commit to spending a windfall on
someone else. This suggests that people may act generously after experiencing any happiness inducing event – whether that be recalling a previous prosocial spending experience
or indulging in a slice of chocolate cake. That said, in contrast to a fleeting pleasure like
eating chocolate cake, prosocial spending may be particularly promising route to prosocial
behavior because it has been shown to increase happiness immediately after spending
(Dunn et al. 2008, 2010) and later upon reflection, as demonstrated here. This research also
supports the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions by demonstrating that higher
levels of happiness may expand an individual’s mindset to include thoughts of others.
Finally, our findings also dovetail with those of Cohn and Fredrickson (in press) by
demonstrating that initial happiness gains can cause a happiness intervention to become
self-reinforcing. Therefore, to the extent that initial happiness gains predict continued
practice and continued practice predicts sustained benefits, a positive feedback loop
between practice and well-being may be essential for achieving sustainable happiness.
The feedback loop between prosocial spending and happiness presented here may seem
intuitive, but previous research on prosocial behavior has shown that one kind act does not
always inspire similar behavior in the future. Specifically, research on moral licensing has
shown that committing one kind deed may actually decrease the likelihood of committing
a future kind act because knowledge of one’s earlier generosity inflates one’s sense of
morality and permits self-interested acts in the future (see Merritt et al. 2010). For
example, if someone gives money to a homeless individual one afternoon, they may be less
likely to donate to a charity collector later that evening. This is because one’s initial act of
generosity boosts feelings of moral behavior, thereby freeing one to act less generously
later. Thus, a moral licensing hypothesis might have predicted that recalling a previous act
of prosocial spending would have decreased the likelihood that participants would choose
to engage in prosocial spending when presented with the new windfall. The present data
therefore add to our understanding of when prosocial behavior might be repeated, by
suggesting that happiness experienced after the initial kind deed may be key to determining
whether this initial kind deed leads to another.
Prosocial spending may increase happiness both immediately after spending and upon
recollection, but does the amount of money spent influence the happiness returns? Replicating previous findings (Dunn et al. 2008), the data presented here suggest that how
money is spent may matter more than how much money is spent. That is, participants who
recalled spending on others felt happier than those who spent money on themselves, and
the benefits of prosocial spending were the same regardless of whether they spent $100 or
just $20. Recent work suggests that prosocial behavior leads to emotional gains by providing opportunities for positive social contact (Aknin et al. 2011b); therefore, prosocial
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353
spending should promote happiness if the spending opportunity fosters positive relations
with others, which may be largely independent of the specific amount of money spent.
Of course, this study is not without limitations. First, as mentioned above, these data
were collected on a Canadian university campus, and recent research suggests that it is
critical to look beyond Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (‘‘WEIRD’’)
samples in understanding human behavior (see Henrich et al. 2010a, b). Thus, these
pathways are now being studied in other countries around the world. Initial research
suggests that the emotional benefits of prosocial spending may extend well beyond the
limited population studied in the present research (Aknin et al. 2011a).
A second limitation is that participants in this study were asked to recall a previous
spending occasion, rather than actually going out and buying something for themselves or
someone else. We chose this reminiscence-based methodology because it has been used
successfully in previous research for studying the long-term emotional consequences of real
world spending experiences (e.g., Carter and Gilovich 2010; Van Boven and Gilovich
2003). A final limitation is that participants’ future spending choices may have been
influenced by social desirability concerns.2 This possibility seems unlikely however,
because past research has shown that most people are quite willing to report preferring to
spend money on themselves, even when no special precautions are taken to minimize social
desirability concerns (Dunn et al. 2008). Further, because there was no way for research
assistants to know which spending experience participants selected, it is unclear who participants might have been trying to deceive by selecting the prosocial spending option.
These important limitations notwithstanding, this initial research has implications for
both organizations and individuals. First, because these data suggest that past instances of
prosocial spending lead to future acts of prosocial spending only to the extent that
recollections of earlier spending produce feelings of happiness, fundraising organizations
may benefit from making initial donation experiences as pleasurable and memorable as
possible to encourage subsequent generous behavior. If initial donation experiences are
positive, providing donors with the opportunity to reflect upon these donations may make
them more receptive to providing continued support. Second, these findings have implications for individuals seeking to escape the hedonic treadmill. These data suggest that
while the benefits of a happiness intervention may fade, higher levels of happiness may
reinforce other happiness-increasing behaviors––as seen in the prosocial spending and
happiness feedback loop we demonstrate. Therefore, to the extent that happinessincreasing strategies boost happiness in the short term and encourage the same behavior
again, people may be able find a path to sustainable happiness.
Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Jason Chin, Alyssa Croft, Kate Rogers, and Azim
Shariff for helpful comments on an earlier draft.
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One additional limitation is that we did not measure individual difference in social value orientations and
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